Fundamentals
by GrindingV2
Summary: Practising your core mechanics for long enough will almost always beat any cheese. Doesn't mean that the latter doesn't have it's uses. Quite the contrary... In which a male SI gets thrown into a death pit filled with rogue shinobi, armed to the teeth with curse marks. Best part about it? A complete lack of knowledge about Naruto. Currently undergoing rewrite
1. Chapter 1-1

**A/N I merged the first 3 chapters. Really nothing else. An archived version of the story will also be created to house the first draft of this story once it gets replaced.**

 **Probably in a few years.**

 **Enjoy**

I woke in blistering heat. I tried to groan, but all that came out was a choked croak with how dry mouth was. God, these summer heat waves were getting unbearable. As I slowly became more aware of my surroundings, I smelled smoke. I snapped my eyes open at that thought, and immediately afterwards regretted it as an explosion went off, raining debris down on me. I sat up, coughing and waving my hands around to try and disperse the cloud of dust around me, all the while blinking rapidly in an effort to get the dust out of eyes.

I heard a series of snapping sounds, and - _shit!_. To my dismay a large beam of wood decided that it would be a great time to squash an unsuspecting human. I tried scrambling out of the way, but my arms and legs felt... Weird, for a lack of a better term. I didn't have the level of control that I was used to, and they were way too short. So, instead of scrambling away from the beam, I only managed to bring my head and chest away from it, leading to me having both legs pinned down.

As I sat there in shock at what just happened, I finally got a moment to take a look at my surroundings, and I almost wished I didn't. I was in the centre of a raging inferno, which explained the unbearable heat, the dryness in my mouth as well as why I was dry heaving like mad whenever I wasn't coughing. What was bad about fires, other then the heat and the flames… Smoke inhalation. What did you do to prevent smoke inhalation again? Wet cloth right? So, I pulled by shirt over my nose and mouth in an attempt to help them out. Some protection had to be better than no protection right? Fuck… I was not prepared for this.

I really needed to get out of here, and what was stopping me? My eyes looked down at the offending piece of architecture.

I tried lifting the beam up, but my body still felt weird, and I didn't have the level of strength I was used to. Coupled with the fact that I wasn't in a position where I could use my strength optimally, the beam barely budged. Which was a glaring issue, as the fire was steadily closing in. To make matters worse, it appeared that the fire had no shortage of flammable a to burn through before it got to me, and that it wasn't going to put itself out any time soon.

A calm settled over me as I thought about my situation. My special breed of panic. Alright, I had to get away from this beam of wood. Why can't I? Because it's weight is holding it down on top of me. I couldn't lift it up, and after some wiggling around I determined that I couldn't slide myself out from under it. I could feel the fire closing in, and by now my eyes were watering. The seconds felt like they were speeding up, and I needed a solution quick or I'd be a crispy, burnt husk of myself. Dammit!I punched the ground in frustration at the fact that I needed out _now,_ only for it to come away… Dirty? And in that moment, I realized just how stupid I could be. Of course! I'd dig myself out from under that piece of woo- _what the fuck the end of it is on fire._ Refusing to waste any more time, I grabbed a sharp rock from around me, and I started digging. This ground was hard packed and dry from the fire and probably people walking over it, and thus my progress was slow.

And as I dug, I could see the fire steadily moving towards my left leg. This… Didn't make any sense! I was pretty sure that fire did not burn through wood that quickly! However, soon enough the fire was close enough to me to start burning. I had burned myself before, but this - this was by far one of the worse experiences of my life. I could barely think past the pain that my legs were in. My arms were also burning from both exertion and from burns caused by their close proximity to the fire. My few shallow breaths were jammed right in between coughing and even more dry heaving. Thank god I didn't have anything to eat before this whole ideal.

Food… Huh, what I'd do for some water, I was so thirsty… No… I needed to stay focused. My eyes, oh god, it hurt to keep them open. I opted to close my left eye shut and only squint through the right.

And finally, I dug out enough earth to pull my legs out. At this point, I couldn't feel pain anymore even as my burnt skin scraped against the bottom of that bloody support beam. Must have been the adrenaline. I didn't dare put any weight on my burnt legs, so I resorted to crawling my way out of this burning building. At least my arms were usable, if burnt. I winced as I realized that my legs would probably be unusable for the rest of my life. I was sure that I'd already burned way to many nerves for that to be a possibility. Still, I'd rather be alive with no legs then dead. So I kept on crawling, even as smoke inhalation crept up on me and I could feel myself slipping. No… Not now. I was almost out. I could see outside of this burning building, I could do it.

And as I crawled, my thoughts making less and less sense the longer I crawled, I something glint. Something inside me told me to crawl towards it, and I did. I ended up at the feet of someone. Looking up, the only things that I could make out were his silver hair and ridiculous looking glasses. I groaned, and I heard laughter. The man said something, before laughing some more before his hands started glowing green. At this point, I could do nothing to stop him as he brought his hands to my legs. My legs started itching, and the man frowned. But as I watched, I could see the skin on my legs growing back, and feeling gradually returned to them.

What. The. Fuck. Was this… near instantaneous healing? Holy shit! I needed to get my hands on this! In the end, however, the whole ordeal was catching up to me. My eyelids were drooping, so that explained why there were humanoid shapes moving faster than eyes could track them.

I woke up sprawled on the ground. The floor was cold. After further investigation it turned out to be stone. Opening my eyes, I was met with a fog of some sort, obscuring much of my vision and making it increasingly difficult to see. I didn't know if the fog would be detrimental to my health, but nonetheless I fumbled to cover my nose and mouth with my shirt before I realized I had some sort of knife in my hand. I set it down on the ground before hastily pulling up my suspiciously clean shirt until it covered my nose and mouth. What happened to my old clothing? I was relatively sure I wasn't wearing clothing of such high quality as this.

It also seemed liked I didn't have much control over my actions, as my movements were still still either sluggish or controllably fast. Couldn't get fine motor control of any type. On a more positive note, I found my legs to be completely fine. Even though my arms were scarred, my legs were completely without blemishes and the fire seemed more like a dream then anything else. That bogus healing must've been extremely effective for it to work that well. I finally noted that I could feel a warm feeling throughout my body, and I felt a sort of humming inside myself. It ended up with me feeling… energized.

I decided that I'd worry more about that later, and leaned down to palm the knife again. It was a rather short knife - not even long enough to be considered a dagger. It was a rather dark blade, with a hole at the bottom of the handle. Perhaps used as a way to clip to something? Whatever the case, the blade itself was razor sharp, and I swore as I cut myself on the knife. There was a wicked curve on the blade as well, leading me to believe that it was more designed for slicing then throwing or stabbing. I slowly wiped away the blood now sprouting of my left thumb and waded into the fog.

I soon found that the space that I was occupying was maze like, if not an actual maze. The walls on either side of me were 5 meters apart and I couldn't reach the ceiling.

The light was cast extremely confusingly, causing shadows to go everywhere in the fog, causing odd shapes to fly around, and occasionally flying straight towards me. The first few times that happened, I slashed at those rogue shapes. Couldn't be too sure, and I must've been given this knife for a reason. In any case, I continued to walk down the maze, trying to find a way out. I slowly got desensitized towards the shadows, though I wasn't sure whether or not hat was a good thing. If there ever was a real threat, I might not react fast enough. And I had a sinking feeling that there was a real threat, given the freaky healing and bullshit visibility of my new environment.

As I walked, I my still covered nose picked on the stench of rotting flesh. I grimaced. The smell was putrid. After a few more moments, I gagged. If something was rotting, it was probably wise to free up some movement. Thus, I slowly pulled down my shirt, helping free my arms. Making a few slashing motions at more shadows, I happened across the first dead body I'd ever seen. In either of my bodies.

He was rotting out. Flies were swarming around him, probably attracted by the smell and… everything else around him. His eyes were gouged out, and some of his brains were on the floor. His chest was looted of all the meat there, and his calves were completely cut off. His guts were also pooled out on the ground, and I could see multiple missing organs from there. Overall, it was an utterly gruesome sight, not aided by the massive pool of dried blood, the blood being a bright shade of red. There were also some copious white stains next to him. Well shit. It looked like I was sharing a maze with cannibals and rapists. Or necrophiliacs. I didn't like where this train of thought was bringing me.

Thankfully, that was remedied as I stood there for exactly four seconds before moving to the side and dry heaving. Thankfully, I didn't have anything inside my stomach or else I would've made a huge mess next to the dead guy, as well as lose any digestible food there. Then again, having nothing there wasn't necessarily a good sign either.

His blood wasn't even that dark yet (information that required me to lean close and observe with the bad lighting. I almost puked again). IT was _fresh_. At most 24 hours old. So, it was high time I got out of dodge. Turning around, I started jogging back the way I came. The disemboweled man never quite leaving my mind, for even with the extremely limited amount of information I had a sinking feeling settled in that I'd end up like that if things didn't change drastically.

I didn't know what I was doing. I sure didn't want to walk around aimlessly, but that was what walking around trying to find an exit felt like. I wanted to do something - anything- to try and improve my situation but I didn't know what to do. It was frustrating because I didn't want to waste my time, energy, and possibly run into trouble pursuing something that would ultimately return on investment. I could use a break to really think. My feet were throbbing from walking for hours on end anyway, so I decided to take a short break to relieve them.

I sat down, ]thinking about what I wanted to do next. Initially, I thought that I could leave some sort of trail - but that failed very quickly. I couldn't afford to use bodily fluids such as saliva or blood as I didn't want to lose such valuable resources. Scratching my knife along the wall didn't seem to dull the blade to my surprise, but I quickly discovered the act of scratching the wall with my knife made a sound similar to nails on a chalkboard. The thought of someone potentially finding me after that mistake had me on edge for dozens of tense minutes.

And to make matters worse, escape wasn't even the least of my worries. My water situation had quickly become dire. Starting off with no water at all, I was already becoming thirsty mere hours into this labyrinth. Even if I did manage to secure a source of water, I still had to worry about what I was going to eat. Walking burned calories and my body didn't have much fat to burn.

I had a feeling that if I started burning muscle I'd be the end of me.

So what? Did that mean that… Oh god. Human flesh. Dismembered guy. I shivered thinking about the body I found. Would I have to eat what remained of him? There were definitely humans out to eat other humans, he was simply proof of that. He was cut up and more edible sections such as the calves were taken and probably consumed.

I rubbed my eyes. Was I really contemplating cannibalism after mere hours without food or water? Would I really even be able to eat another person if I killed one? Killing another human… Could I even do it? I'd never done anything close to that before, and taking another life felt like the ultimate violation. Could I really kill another living, breathing person without hesitation should the need arise… Were these the drastic changes that I felt I required?

I tried my darn hardest to never lie to myself. With that in mind, I slowly stood back up and continued walking. Whether I liked it or not, I knew that deep down the answer to most, if not all those questions was a simple yes. And that scared me.

After all this time practising with my new body, I had slowly become accustomed to it. Of course, I was nowhere near as good with it as my old body. Sadly, I suspected it'd take years before I could achieve the same level of proficiency, especially given the fact that I seemed rather young and my puberty growth spurt would hit sooner rather than later. Still, I'd seen massive improvements in motor control and had taken time to move around to try and adjust. I felt comfortable enough to start sprinting, and I was even able to run for extended periods of time without too much hassle.

After balling up my shirt then throwing and catching it I came to the conclusion that my hand eye coordination still needed improvement. That would be worked on, even though I didn't exactly know how to improve it. That was a problem indeed.

Walking was _monotonous._ That was one way to put it. After hours of walking, even while asking myself important questions, I still felt a feeling of boredom. Completely unjustified boredom, but boredom nonetheless. Granted, I'd rather have boredom over excitement in this context. Excitement meant probable danger, though I probably needed some of that to get out. I found playing with my knife to be the most interesting activity at my disposal, changing how I held it quickly, twirling it around, swapping hands, all matter of things.

Whatever the case, I needed sleep. I'd grown tired, and I just found a perfectly good spot on the ground. Exactly like every other spot on the ground. I shrugged and made myself as comfortable as I could on cold slabs of stone, making sure to lay down in a way that allowed me to easily grab my knife without stabbing myself. That certainly wouldn't be a pleasant way to wake up.

My stomach growled, once again reminding me of my circumstances. I needed food, and I needed water. I had no clue on how long I'd been here, what with the lack of windows. Now that I allowed myself to think about it, I was pretty sure a lack of sunlight could lead to depression. Maybe it took longer to kick in because I sure didn't feel very depressed.

The first stage of depression is denial.

I smiled to myself at my joke. An old joke, associated with fond memories and friends. No maze, no literally and metaphorically edgy knife, and certainly no disembowelled and partially dismembered humans. Simpler times indeed…

I was awoken from my sleep by yells and footsteps. I blinked a few times, wondering where I was before it all washed over me. I was in a maze, potential murderers all around me, and _holy shit there's a fight breaking out_. I had my knife in hand the moment that thought finished, and I was scrambling to my feet. I was tripping over myself and had to use the wall to help me up. That cost me valuable seconds.

It seemed like the commotion was coming from my right, so naturally, I ran away from it. While I could've gained valuable information, judging from all the cries of pain I was hearing it would be a better idea for me to stay away from the incident and worry about myself first.

I was readying myself mentally as well. If anyone showed up in stabbing range that I didn't immediately recognize and that I could kill or incapacitate within 2 stabs, then they would be stabbed. Stab first, ask questions probably never.

With that in mind, I continued my running. Right into a wall of stone that I quickly realized wasn't in fact a wall of stone but rather a very large and very tall humanoid figure covered in what appeared to me rock plates. After a few moments of shock for the both of us, I reacted first by letting go of my bleeding nose and I booked it, pumping my legs as hard as I could. The rock (why did I come up with these things while I was in mortal danger?) ran straight after me. He was yelling incoherently in what sounded like some sort of Japanese, though I couldn't be sure.

Those plates had to be heavy, as I was running pretty fast when I crashed into him and he didn't budge. And yet somehow, The Rock was keeping pace with me. I needed to deal with this problem _now,_ or I'd be turned into a red smear on the wall. As I turned another corner with the rock right on my heels, I realized something.

The Rock carried tremendous momentum, so every time he rounded a corner he'd either have to skid to a halt and turn ninety degrees or crash straight into the wall and continue running from there. Right? _Wrong!_ That fucker found some bullshit way to round corners while maintaining his top speed _without_ crashing into the wall or breaking his ankles from turning ninety degree angles. Sure, he couldn't round them all that tightly but he could still do it without making a crater with his shoulder.

The only mildly helpful things were my knife, which I was now gripping onto tightly and the fact that the fog was clearing up wherever we ran so that I could see the Rock barreling towards me, getting closer and closer even though I was running at full tilt. Weaknesses, weaknesses, weaknesses! There had to be something! Nothing was perfect after all, there was always some exploitable feature.

And as we rounded another what was probably the twentieth corner in around ninety seconds did I find it. Joints. He had to leave his joints and his pivot points open, otherwise, he wouldn't be able to run properly or move at all. Quick glances behind me proved this theory. He had plates covering his kneecaps, but the backs looked a little undefended. There were gaps underneath his armpits and between the legs where I could slash if need me. His neck was largely guarded by a piece of rock jutting out from his torso to wrap around that area to prevent my blade from sneaking in.

But it also had the end of result of him not being able to see directly under him. Restricted vision. And there I had it. All the pieces required to form a strategy to kill this fucker. I didn't have nearly as many options as I would've liked, but there wasn't anything that I could do about that. I had a plan. A highly risky plan that could easily backfire, but a plan nonetheless. If I didn't execute it, he would catch up to me within the next 5 minutes and I'd be dead, guaranteed. With this plan, I at least had a chance to survive.

So, the next time I turned left, I counted the seconds it took for The Rock to reach that same left and become visible. Ten seconds after I turned. I changed my grip on my knife to a reverse grip. After another right turn, I reached a crossroads. Without hesitation, I took the left turn and instead of continuing to run I waited at the corner right after the curve, out of sight from The Rock.

Lo and behold, nine seconds later and right on time he rounded that corner and I pounced, slashing the back of both of his kneecaps. He screamed out in pain and turned around trying to smash his fists into me, but I wasn't done yet. I got ready to stab while using my much smaller body size to slide right between his legs, slashing his groin as I slid past. With that done The Rock crumpled to his knees and I leapt up and onto him, quickly climbing up to his shoulders and finally pushing his head to the side and slid my knife right into his newly exposed neck. I ripped out my knife and continued stabbing away at his neck, and after a few more stabs I slashed his throat for good measure before finally stopping. All thanks to that impaired vision. And weird turning ratios.

My right arm was covered in a warm sticky goo and I suddenly got another urge to heave. Quickly quelling my rebelling stomach, I jumped off the falling corpse and took a quick look at it. I had no idea how he got this rock shield all around him, but it was a really nice ability. Even if I probably couldn't loot it, and even then it wouldn't be practical. Taking a look over his dead body, all I found was a canteen half full of water. Definitely better than nothing at least. His pants were definitely ruined, and he didn't have a shirt on to begin with. Perhaps he had a knife at some point, but in the thirty seconds of looking him over, I couldn't find anything of the sort. Finally, before leaving I wiped my knife and arms off on his pants legs. Blood was a pretty nasty thing to have drying on you or something you cared about.

I continued jogging after that, making sure to pay extra close attention to my surroundings so that I wouldn't get jumped and/or killed. I had my knife in hand, ready to stab, but I was also poised to run. That encounter with The Rock was a complete mess, and I almost got myself killed for my troubles. Anyone of things could've gone wrong and I'd be his raw uncooked dinner. If I'd slipped up on the slashing of his knees, missed his groin, not jumped up him fast enough. If he'd reacted faster to me climbing him, if he got a lucky swing in when he couldn't see me, heck if I misjudged his momentum and speed rounding that corner the entire plan would've probably been derailed. While I knew that surviving that encounter wasn't dumb luck, it certainly wasn't pure skill either.

I didn't think about the human, the person that I killed. It was self defence. It was justified. There was a language barrier. It was me or him. But still, I couldn't help but think of any hopes, or dreams, or legacy of his, silenced in mere minutes at my hands. I didn't dwell on that. I knew that one day, I'd have to acknowledge my actions but for now, it was easier just to push them to the back of my mind.


	2. Chapter 1-2

Ever since my run in with The Rock, I was jumpy. Every shadow an unknown assailant, every corner an ambush. My slashing at shadows had also completely stopped - I was utterly convinced that if one person had armour like that, someone else had to have something equally disgusting, and I was putting myself at a disadvantage by stretching myself out and striking where there may be nothing. Even if I did catch someone, in the end, the risks probably outweighed the rewards.

After a while, I finally realized that my right arm wasn't just covered in The Rocks blood, it had my own on it as well. In those life or death moments, I'd run my arm against his rough armour and torn up a significant portion of my skin. At least it wasn't deep, though my arm was continuously itchy and I had to consciously resist the urge to scratch it. It wasn't a terribly large wound per se, but it bothered me greatly. Not to mention the risk of infection, or any number of problems that could arise.

Then there was my problem with water. And it was bad. My throat was completely parched, even though I'd only been here for around half a day.

It meant that I had one major priority. Get water. So how was I going to get water?

Well, I could search for it. I'd been walking for hours now, and I'd been walking at a good clip the entire time. A kilometer every twelve minutes, I'd say. That's around 50 kilometers. No water. Maybe I had to search for longer? This entire complex was obviously intentionally built. And I'd been intentionally placed in it. There was probably some source of water, right? I mean, they could make it without water to simply observe myself and others in a situation without a water source, but I hoped otherwise, as if that was a case then there wasn't much of a point of thinking this through. So, under the assumption that there is water, how else do I reach this water source?

I couldn't think of an alternative, so that meant a lot of walking awaited me. For a few hours agonizingly long hours I walked along, increasingly twitchy at everything around me and not feeling secure in the slightest. My knife quickly became a symbol of safety, as it was instrumental in getting me out of the previous encounter and I only felt safe with it firmly in my grasp. I'd feel a lot safer with a gun…

And I only got thirstier as I walked further along. I wasn't good with a lack of water, then or now.

Luckily for me, my hopes were answered soon afterwards when I walked down a patch of fog, quite a bit thicker than usual, to the point where it was almost opaque. Deciding to go down this hallway, after a few moments I seemed to cross some sort of invisible boundary and felt myself getting sucked in a little, with the fog cleared in front of me. It was still just as murky behind me however.

I found myself in a large, circular room, around 25 meters in diameter, and in the center was a large pool of water. O glorious water. It was sectioned off into quarters with a sizable amount of water in each section. That was my water situation solved right there if I could get to that life saving water. Of course, my first reaction was to rush in and get my hands on some of that precious liquid.

Fortunately for me, I knew what people did when they got their hands on a highly contested resource. They'd take proactive measures to ensure that it wasn't taken away from them. It made sense, but it also made my life a heck of a lot harder.

Of course, I could be the first one to stumble across this pool of water, but that seemed unlikely to me. I started walking forwards, knife up and ready to go. I first walked around the room, checking it over. Not much to look over, with it being a circular room. I could see everything inside the room at a glance, but I made sure to do a sweep anyway. The walls seperating the water were wide enough for me to walk on, but I still refused to take that chance. There was still plenty of room for me to walk around the pool of water anyways, a 5 meter wide ring of dry land to move on. There were four entrances in total, and each quarter of water was facing an exit.

After circling back to where I began, I took a knee and sunk my left hand into the water right in front of me. Refusing to stop looking around the room, I carefully brought up my left hand while keeping my knife at the ready.

I was ready to bolt at first contact.

Putting my left hand up to my mouth, I carefully drank. The water was cool and crisp, and tasted just fine. I knew about the whole bunch of health risks that I was exposing myself to, drinking water like that, but I needed water in my body. Even if I did have severe diarrhea or some sort of parasite afterwards. Heck, if the water was actually poisoned I'd still drink, as it was this or nothing anyways.

Next, I needed to wash my right arm. Still, I refused to let down my guard. That was what caused me to have to wash my arm in the first place; I was looking behind me when I ran to The Rock, and constant vigilance sounded like a fine plan for the time being after that incident. Putting both of my hands down into the pool, I started rubbing my right arm, gently trying to get the blood off. My knife was still in my right hand, and as I continued staring at the exits, I saw a small child slowly walk in the room from the entrance to my left. He immediately froze, but I was already moving by the time he saw me. The last thing his wide eyes saw was my knife before it sank deep into his throat.

Realizing he was going to die anyways, I wiggled my knife around a bit in an effort to kill him faster. Put him out of his misery

…

Realizing that I'd just killed a ten year old child completely unprovoked a few moments later, it was my turn for my eyes to go wide. Well, shit. I'd launched myself at him at the first hint of movement, and I had enough momentum that I couldn't stop myself without potentially stabbing myself in the process.

I mean, that wasn't entirely true. I could've stopped myself, but then there would've been an extremely loud scream coming from the kid and I really didn't want my location broadcasted to everyone in the area. The chances of me randomly bumping into someone where probably high enough. Stepping back a bit, I also realized that the kid had a bit of meat on him…

I was hungry, and if this would be my only food source…

The kid was dead anyways. He didn't need his body anymore, it was just a sack of flesh now that I'd separated all the thinking parts from the rest of the body. I could get myself a good few hundred calories at minimum...

Hold up, was I really considering - nay - justifying cannibalism?

What if I was?

Well, before I worried about that I'd have to loot his corpse of course. Kid had his own knife, a straight, steel variant that was quite unlike my own however, and a little pouch on his leg that you could hold things in, sorta like a really durable pocket.

AFter a few more moments of just staring into his glassy eyes, I finally went out the left side, dragging the dead kid along. He was pretty light, and I figured that I could use him as a shield. You could easily get a blade stuck in the rib cage if you weren't careful after all. As for the way I went, I figured that knowing the terrain better could potentially help in any possible fights, and maybe if I stayed in a smaller area it would attract less attention. Then again, maybe I wouldn't be able to find a way out if I stayed, so I finally decided that I'd pick the right corridor of the three other pathways. Increase the odds of me getting out. If I could escape without resorting to cannibalism, it'd be ideal.

The first sign of a serious problem came from the slowly dissipating fog. A serious deviation from the norm, as before then the fog had been a constant presence in the hallways of this maze, and it was almost unsettling to have an absence of them. Of course, this improved visibility drastically, but I suppose I was getting used to the fog. Did the dead kid on my back get a chance to get used to it as I did? I grimaced at that thought. Now really wasn't the time.

The second issue was much more noticeable, and it had to do with the ever increasing air temperature. I felt a sort of pressure all over my body, increasing in its supposed weight gradually as I continued walking forwards or stopped walking. I found my thoughts wandering and slowly it became more difficult to focus, while thoughts of running away were quickly increasing in number while at the same time I found myself wanting to simply freeze, and I'd have to jolt myself back into it.

Whatever this was, I didn't like it, not one bit. So, I trusted my gut instinct and started jogging away from it. I trusted my instincts, as they'd served me well in the past.

But, even as I jogged away, the feeling grew and grew, until it was starting to become unbearable. I was having trouble breathing, and everything that did get through were shallow breaths. I guess the fight or flight instinct within me had, for whatever reason, decided staying stationary was the best course of action, and I had to struggle to keep on moving. I had to consciously move legs to walk.

Terrifying, because my arms were locking up on their own, and I had constant images of myself dying in increasingly gruesome flashing across my mind. This was terrible, and I needed out. So, I focused on my legs, and kept on moving those muscles. In a desperate attempt to escape.

I finally identified the emotion I was experiencing, fear. Fear, and a feeling that someone was out to get you, out to kill you. I didn't know what could induce something so primal, what kind of drugs or gases could cause this, but I did know the further I went down the tunnel away from the pools of water the worse it got, so I was trudging my way back.

I soon had to start straining to move. It felt like I was trudging through knee high snow drifts, only my very own body was completely opposed to the idea and was resisting as much as it could.

And as I struggled against it, against my own muscles, sweat forming on my brow, I pushed until I felt something break. Suddenly, I felt power course through me. A deep, resonating feeling within me, empowering and invigorating feeling that cleared my mind. It was downright intoxicating with how good it felt.

… The fuck What kind of gases were there in the air? What was I getting high on?

Now, the only thing holding me back now was my own internal conflict. I was screaming at myself to move, but something inside me refused it. I didn't understand this. This didn't make any sense. Sure, sometimes I locked up before acting (many times too late). But I had been screaming at myself to get a grip and get moving for what felt like hours now. Why wasn't I bursting into an all out sprint yet? By now I should be running like the wind, even with this feeling of fear weighing down on me.

As I struggled, the feeling became greater and greater still, until I was seeing hallucinations of how I'd die constantly, living through terrible fears of mine, even those that I didn't know that I had up until that point. In a final move of desperation, I forced my legs to turn me to look backwards.

Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea. Because behind me was a snake. A giant one. Ten meters out. It's head was as wide as I was, and it was slithering right at me. Real deer in the headlights moment right there, I nearly shat myself. I did feel a slight warm sensation on my inner leg though. Still bad. Conscious thought went right out of the window. I couldn't think straight, and I couldn't move. Panic set in, then fear, and the two had a jolly good time mixing together inside my bundle of electrical signals. Eight meters. I was fixated on the snake, and I couldn't take my eyes of it. I needed to move, I needed to run. But, my legs simply wouldn't obey me. The fuck was going on?

For whatever reason, it brought up a memory, a very old memory. I was running, in a forest, god rays shining through the canopy. Running from what and to where, I couldn't remember (wasn't joking about the old memory part). I was getting exhausted and ended up tripping on my own feet and running my right arm through a particularly spiky bush. I remembered feeling the dozens of tiny pinpricks and scratches running along my forearm... It cleared my mind and I was back to running.

So, if pain could help with exhaustion by (to my understanding) pumping chemicals in you to get your ass in gear, why couldn't I do the same in this situation to get moving again? Just had to force my arm to move, and... stab myself. I didn't want to stab myse - four meters away now. So, before I could stop myself with doubts, I stabbed my knife into my upper left arm. I snapped out of it, and was out of there just like that.

Concentrating on my legs again, I dashed right down the hall, way too fast. Too much power in my legs, and I narrowly avoided face planting into a wall by skidding to a stop and starting to run again. Now mostly back into control I first slapped my right hand onto my wound, and then I was consciously thinking about my steps, estimating how far each stride would take me, and how I'd land. Concentrating on the running was difficult, but it did allow me to start avoid thinking about the snake, looming death and spiders.

I rather belatedly realized that I was most definitely being funnelled in this direction. Stopping immediately, I realized just how bad this could potentially be. Oh fuck. Dear god. I'm getting pushed towards the pool area. Was this something that happened with that dead kid? Got funnelled into a situation that he was utterly unprepared for? He did seem out of breath now that I thought about it…

Whatever the case, I wouldn't make the same mistake. I was at the ready again, trusty knife in hand, and I still wasn't ready to take much on.

I nearly stopped running as I heard a scream - really high pitched, definitely a guy - and flipped my knife around to a reverse grip before returning it to its initial orientation. A useful thing to be able to do in a fight, if a little flashy. Sometimes, that was the only way to get the angle that you desired.

Before I went into any fight, I, of course, had to take mental stock. Know yourself and know your enemy and in a hundred battles you shall never lose (or something like that). I couldn't get to know my enemy, so I may as well got to know myself. I had two knives on me, the knife I always had and a slightly shorter, straight knife, held in a small pouch on the side of my leg. Probably a throwing knife, even as large as it was. Of course, I couldn't throw it. So it was just a device to stab with. As far as injuries went, I had a decently sized stab wound on my left arm, which meant that I didn't have anywhere near my normal range of motion in that arm, and it was still throbbing, though mostly usable. The blood was drying and coagulating underneath my hand. Ripping off my sleeve on my right arm, I bandaged the stab, doing my best not to disturb my wound.

I still had my canteen, full of water. Taking it out, I took a drink while continuing to think. I had a meat shield of sorts, that weighed maybe 60 pounds. I could now run at faster speeds, albeit requiring almost all of my attention and with decreased control. It also tired me out considerably, and I just knew that my legs would be throbbing soon. I had, maybe a good ten minutes of that sort of running left in me. I also knew that I haven't pushed myself as far as I could go yet, I could still push a bit harder, but I didn't want to strain my body like that yet. Still, I now had a vague idea of what my limits were, which was very useful.

As far as fighting went, my best bet was probably the age old 'run away until you can deal with it later' tactic. I couldn't see many situations where it'd make sense for me to go on the offensive from the get go, and even then I'd probably hesitate or something of the sort and that idea would go down the drain quickly. Actually, if concentrating on my legs and pushing result in a noticeable increase in strength, then what would happen if I did the same thing only with my arms?

Knowing myself, I would either put way too much force behind it, dislocate my arm and break my hand, or completely miss and leave myself wide open for a counter attack. Personally, I didn't like either option. So that still left run away and wait for a better opportunity. I could do that. It wasn't even like boosting myself made that much of a difference. I guess the experience had shocked me a little bit initially, but while the difference was noticeable I wasn't going to be jumping five meters straight up any time soon.

I couldn't even hold back for much longer, as that fear factor would come into play whenever I was anywhere near that piece of shit. I was definitely not going through that again. So, I continued on, right up to the entrance to the Pool Room. Even with the lack of gas in the air, I could still feel that sucking feeling as I drew closer to the entrance, where I eventually simply lay in wait for a few moments. I'd wait for screams to happen, and go in on my own terms when I felt appropriate for myself. That was the plan, and as I slowly crept forwards, I hated it more and more. Fuck, did I try my odds with the snake or whatever unknown in the room ahead of me?

I didn't like my odds with the giant serpent. If that was the incorrect choice, then, well, I guess that I wouldn't have to live with the consequences for long (I'd be dead). Honestly, no better time for another long scream to fill the air, before being abruptly cut off.

That was the second one now, and I needed to get a fucking move on. How? Sure, I could charge right through that entrance, but what if they had projectiles? A trap of some sort? So fucking risky, but I'd have to go through with it. Really no other choice. So, I snuck up to the doorway to try and scope out the competition before I dived headfirst into them

Immediately, I saw two kids duking it out in the pool room. One's back was covered in porcupine quills, clutching his side. Apparently, he was the one screaming before. He'd try and get a shot off with his quills on the other combatant. Said other combatant had clearly lost his mind. He was running at porcupine headfirst, without a weapon in hand, slobber whipping around him. Like a rabid dog with blunt teeth. He was also completely covered in striped black tattoos head to toe.

He was running around extremely quickly, and his punch held considerable power behind it. Every time he missed porcupine and instead hit a wall, there would be a new crater. His lack of movement was always immediately followed by a burst of quills from porcupine, though he only had half of them left on his back and tattoos would simply shrug off the damage.

I thought that it couldn't get any better, but no, it could, because the both of them started running on water in a continued effort to gain the upper hand. Seriously, tattoos couldn't seem to make proper sentences and he was running on water? Incredible. I had to investigate this. They were spreading out their weight on the top of the water so as not to break the surface tension of the water.

In any case, I had to deal with the two of them some way. The easiest would probably to let them tire each other out further before swooping in and removing whoever was left. Or, I could come in if either of them produced an opening that I could exploit.

Of course porcupine noticed me, and as he glanced in my direction I saw his eyes widen a tiny bit. However, he obviously wasn't very good at the whole fighting schtick, because he diverted his attention long enough for tattoos to finally land a solid hit on porcupines back, resulting in his fist getting several new spikes and his face to quickly resemble the head of a broom. That was what I was waiting for.

I knew that I probably only had one shot to get this right, and I needed to be accurate about it. One hit to sever the brain from the rest of the body. So, I brought my knife around as I approached tattoos and stabbed him right through the back of his neck. He had a peculiar tattoo next to it though, like 3 commas in a circular shape.

Whatever the case, I made sure to slash his throat as well. Wouldn't take much extra time, and I was nothing if not thorough. I didn't want any surprises from him.

With that taken care of, I had to quickly duck behind my second meatshield as porcupine disengaged and began firing at me. That hit from tattoos must have hurt, and I could almost guarantee a great deal of internal bleeding. Honestly, it was a miracle that he could still move much less begin firing on me. So, after putting away my second knife I took the kid I was carrying off my shoulder and used him as shield. Tattoos was probably too heavy to work properly in this particular situation.

Using the kid to soak up any quills shot at me, I neared porcupine. At this point, he only had a quarter of the quills on his back remaining. While they were growing at an alarming rate, the newly forming quills on his back were at least a few minutes away from completion. More than enough time for me to finish this fight, even with a left arm that was starting to gush blood.

Continuing to run after him, I threw the kid at him. He was caught completely by surprise, but still managed to dodge the flying pincushion. Whatever. He had to move out of the way of the kid, and I round right around and sank my blade into his chest. He clutched at my hand for a few moments before finally ceasing to move.

Pulling my knife out, I cleaned the blade on his shirt and then washed my hands in one of the pools of water.

I looked over the room and smiled to myself, bobbing my head to some rhythm that I used to know very well. Crisis averted through a job well done. Note to self - never, under any circumstances, underestimate the element of surprise.

I was slowly building up my information of where I was dropped off. I now knew that people could walk on water, have animal characteristics, and get tattoos that greatly increases their strength (I couldn't attribute anything else to tattoos' raw power). I also had this weird power up boost inside me, and one of my top priorities was to properly utilize that.

But, a higher priority still would be too address my hunger and tiredness. I had done a lot of physical activity the past few hours, and I was slowly feeling the grasping claws of hunger close around me. If I wanted to stay in peak mental and physical condition then I needed calories inside me. I turned to porcupine.

It wasn't cannibalism if he was part porcupine, right?

Oh, who was I kidding. It really was.

But I needed food, and the humans laying around me were the only source of food around. They didn't have any other sources of calories on them other then their own meat and bones.

Even if I was going to eat them (I'd definitely try when I got desperate enough), I didn't know which parts I could eat without cooking. Or maybe they had diseases and were carrying them. I didn't want to kill myself by eating other people. That would be just sad.

Of course there was the snake, but the problem of cooking remained. I also had no clue how to prepare a snake. Humans on the other hand, were at least mammals. To top it off I had no guarantees that I could even kill the snake in the first place anyways. The thing was positively huge, and if it did it's fear aura thing then I was really boned.

Whatever the case, I still needed sleep. I was getting tired, and sleep would be extremely helpful. The water was cool, so maybe it could help me preserve some bodies for possible consumption. Actually it was kinda like a burial at sea - my thoughts when I dumped the kid and porcupine into separate bodies of water. I tried to drop them in in a way that was difficult to see that they were dead people, and it worked rather well. They didn't even float to the surface. However, I was going to bring tattoos with me, as even in death his skin was still hard and he had this durable skin on him. I'd rate him a 7/10 shield, the downsides being that he was a bit on the heavier side and didn't have a usable handle.

The new shield also meant that the flies and other insects would swarm a little less, though not by that much.

With the pool room cleaned up, I set out the way I came once again. I was slowly getting used to the maze, and quickly found where I leapt away from the snake with my first leap. Walking throughout these halls improved my memory on the layout considerably. A very useful experience indeed.

After a few minutes of searching after that point, I found a nice wall to sleep on. I lay there, barely awake, until I fully lost consciousness and greeted the void.

I woke up with my legs sore all over. I let out a muffled groan, before gently massaging them. I knew that this would happen, and unfortunately for me, it did. At least I didn't pull anything. I knew to not overstep my limits by too much. Standing up, I immediately fell back on the wall for support. My vision was covered in bright blue spots, I was dizzy, and I wanted to throw up. I'd experienced this plenty before. If I could see myself, I knew that my face would resemble Voldermort with a nose. Seems like things like these follow you past your (probable) death.

As that feeling gradually passed until it was just a dull nausea, I got off the wall, picked up my shield (he's dead. He wouldn't care that he's literally being a meat shield for me), and walked back to the pool room. The fog had returned, and the lack of many visual guides did not help with my nausea. After tripping a few more times and being forced to pause many times, I finally got to the pool room, the two bodies that I'd dumped were still in there original positions.

Slowly, I pulled porcupine back up by the leg on to dry land, and whipped out my knife. I proceeded to cut off both of his calves, and sank my knife into his stomach area. Liver was edible.

Right?

Whatever…

Where was the liver placed again?

Dear god, I was in for a fun time.

After I'd finished butchering porcupine, my hands were covered with plenty of blood. There were a whole bunch of damaged organs as well, likely from his fight with tattoos. After wiping off my hands in the water, keeping up the same paranoia I previously had, I stabbed all (hopefully) edible pieces of meat with my second knife, and I slung tattoos over my shoulder again. I set back out once more, into the tunnels.

I didn't make it far before quitting and sitting down. It really wasn't that bad, but it was definitely unpleasant. I stared at the calves a little bit more. Eating a little bit was worse then not eating whatsoever, and the first few days of starvation were the worst before the effects tapered off a bit. Then again, maybe I'd cross the point of no return and not have enough calories to get my digestive system in motion.

I gulped. I really was going to do this, huh? So, I cut off a piece of what was hopefully liver, and stuck it in my mouth and started chewing. It was… a peculiar taste and flavour. Sure, it tasted like meat, but it had a squishy, almost smooth texture to it. Sometimes it was a little chewier, but there were also extremely bitter parts to it as well. That was where I promptly spit it out. It was most definitely edible, and I'd eat it. Just, it would take a while to get used to it. The stuff was ok until the bitter parts game up, in which it turned from palatable to piss flavoured broccoli. A true delicacy.

Maybe the terrible taste came from the quills on the guys back? Those were most definitely not natural, and perhaps whatever lab modifications were what caused this whole thing. I'd personally never had liver before, but if it tasted that bad I didn't think that I'd be nearly as popular as I'd been led to believe.

Whatever the case, with the next bit of liver I forced myself to swallow it down, whatever the taste. Calories were important. And I was burning quite a few of them apparently. I didn't feel good to eat body parts, but hey, if it was me or some sentient dickhead I'd never had the pleasure of meeting before, then you'd have to wipe your answer off the ground while I clean my blade on your shirt.

* * *

 _Woo... This is getting interesting. Never would get this much excitement in Konoha, that's for sure. I should even be able to convince Orochimaru not to slap a curse mark on him._

* * *

 **A/N So, I'd like to start this authors note with a huge thank you to everyone who's read, and continues to read this story. Even with it not having many words. And the infrequent uploads… Thank you for giving this a shot, even through all of that. This story started on Thanksgiving, and it's Christmas already.**

 **(we're in for a long A/N everyone. Hey, it's a 5000 word chapter. I don't care. Long enough for a long A/N.** **Been sitting on this for weeks now. 'Bout time I whipped it out and started boasting about its length)**

 **Posting this on Christmas day is really smart, considering a lot of people aren't on fanfiction reading right now (at least I hope you aren't. Then you'd be as lame as me, and that's no fun. Thanks for reading anyways though). But hey, I said that I'd probably do it, so I did.**

 **I have a few smaller updates planned for the next week, so there's going to be some bits of content before it all dries up for a few months. My next guarantee after those updates would be an update in July. Yeah, not looking so good. A lot of other stuff going on during that time. I'm just trying to shit out as much of this as I can before other things take priority.**

 **Anyhow, please do review, favourite and follow if you enjoyed. All feedback is appreciated, no matter the nature of your review.**


	3. Chapter 1-3

After polishing off the liver, I immediately felt better. I needed that food desperately, whether I necessarily wanted it or not. I was, of course, still a little disgusted that I'd consumed human, but the relief it provided was well worth it.

Now, my stomach didn't necessarily like human and whatever he'd had to eat, but that was a different story. If those calories were forcibly pushed out some time, then I knew to pick some better pieces. Anyhow, I deposited the calves in the pool room with the other bits and pieces. I had no use for them at the moment and I'd like to keep them around for at least a little while.

This was the best I'd been in a long time. I was fed, mostly clothed, and had a reliable source of water. The only real downsides were my arm (which surprisingly looked like it was healing rather well), and the ever present possibility of death.

Joy.

I'd continue to search for a way out, even if it kills me (which it very well can).

That liver kept me going for a very long time. I didn't need food often, but if I didn't have it when I needed it most of my bodily functions would suffer because of it. I hadn't actually gone hungry before, as in not past 48 hours without food. When that happened, I just had to limit my physical movements. I could usually still think rather clearly, but if I started to run or sprint, then I would need to use those movements to rush myself to the bathroom and puke in the toilet.

But, I did have food, and with the new goal of getting myself out of this maze I refilled my canteen of water and headed out through the north entrance of the pool room (I'd labelled each door in relation to the door I first came in through. That was the south entrance, to its left the west entrance and so on).

My hope was that because of the skirmish that occurred yesterday, all the dangers in the immediate surrounding area had been flushed out and it was now relatively safe to start wandering the maze. So, I put tattoos to another use, other than being a shield. I'd use him to mark off parts in the maze that I'd already looked through. Couldn't believe that I didn't think of it earlier. This tactic was undoubtedly useful as my short term memory was pretty bad when I wasn't actively reinforcing it, but that required my attention.

With tattoos, all I had to do was splash a little blood and I'd know not to go down that way. Could I be tracked by using this method? Potentially. But I reckoned that the pros outweighed the cons and proceeded with it.

I would use a canteen instead of a rotting corpse with ever decreasing amounts of fluids inside of him, but it would simply be nasty to drink from a canteen that had held blood before, regardless whether or not it could be washed.

Dead ends were a very common thing in this maze. I'd walk down a series of twists, turns and junctures before finding myself facing a wall where the only way out was to go out back the way I came. When I finally got myself back out of the dead end and onto another juncture, I'd mark off the path with a small little bit of blood on the bottom right corner of the corridor, around a foot in. I'd be difficult to see the blood due to the angle that someone walking down the hallway would approach it, and the fog helped mask the drops of blood too, so it'd be difficult to find if you didn't know what to look for. but if you did know that they were there, they were still rather easy to spot as the fog would clear around you and you'd see the splashes of blood.

The only problem was that tattoos were slowly running out of blood to offer up. He'd lost a lot of blood in total, and in only what I guessed was a few hours of using him as human spray paint he practically ran out of blood to offer.

Goddamit!

At least I investigated a large portion of the maze coming out of the north entrance. I probably wouldn't be making a return visit for a while.

In the end, I did go through the west maze, similar to the way I went through the northern maze,' only without blood. It was sure more difficult, but considering there was barely any wind in this system, I simply left bits of cloth from the kid's shirt and used those as markers instead. They worked much the same. And after hours of fruitless searching, I finally returned to the pool room.

Tired from walking another long while, I found a nice spot out of the south entrance to sleep. I made sure not to sleep in the same spot two nights in a row, even though. Didn't know how much of a difference that would actually make.

I went to sleep contemplating the sheer size of this marvel and what researchers would do for science (or maybe it was actually really small, and the walls shifted and I was on drugs to bring it together. That was way scarier than the first option). Or maybe this was just a Hunger Games style version of entertainment, and people were cheering at my kills and throwing up when I ate liver.

I think I preferred the explanation that this was an experiment a little better because then something useful was being gained by my presence and suffering instead of just entertainment.

The first thing that hit me was the feeling of sweat covering my body. Popping open my eyes, I was greeted by the bright, bright sight of extremely white lights - holy shit my eyes! Quickly covering them, I flipped myself over so that I was lying face down on the ground. My eyes, they hurt so goddam much. It was like looking directly at the sun. The hell happened when I was out of it?

After rubbing eyes for a few seconds I brought down my hands, my eyelids still pressed firmly shut. The sunlight was penetrating them, even though I was looking down, giving me the terrible image of a bright red across my vision. Holy fuck that hurt. I normally didn't have any problems with my eyes adjusting to new light levels, but right now it felt like a thousand little blunt needle were slowly getting pushed into my eyeballs.

Now that I was facing the ground, I gingerly opened my eyes and I saw the ground like I'd never seen it before. A whole lot of warm, flat dark grey slabs of rock put together in a sort of cobblestone, kinda like a Roman road. Squinting upwards, hands covering my eyes, I quickly found that the source of all my suffering came from the obnoxiously bright lights up above.

Bright, crackling orbs of pure pain and suffering, they rained down radiation in the form of heat and light, and dear god it was terrible. My eyeballs were smouldering from that initial glimpse upwards, and I usually melted in temperatures greater than 24 degrees Celsius. This was going to be a real pain.

The only positive thing was that I now knew that the ceiling was about 30 meters above my head.

As I struggled to get up, my muscles feeling like jelly and my vision wavering, I finally realized just how parched my throat was. With shaky hands, I slowly opened the canteen (couldn't even look, the thing was made of reflective materials and the light would reflect and fuuuuuuck). After entire minutes of fumbling around, I finally got the canteen open only to have to tilt the canteen weirdly as I couldn't tilt my head upwards without my eyeballs deciding that seppuku was a better way to go then getting burned alive.

And as I finally got the cool, cold, refreshing liquid down my throat - it stopped flowing. God fucking dammit all that pain for a few moments of bliss? There was a goddam full canteen when I went to sleep yesterday, now there's no liquid left!

I needed that water. That cold, refreshing, rejuvenating glorious liquid known as water. And I needed it now... Provided by the pool room. So, on steadier but still mighty shaky legs, I got up and grabbed now significantly lighter and wrinklier tattoos off the ground and started walking over to the pool room. All of my thoughts died inside me, other than the need to get out of here, and to get to the better place. The heat had that sort of effect on me.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I got to the south entrance. I felt like I trekked through a desert. I mean, there were quite a few desert like conditions.

So when I felt the seal complete, I was met with something that I will never appreciate more. The wonders of AC. Sure, even though immediately after my moments in heaven I was immediately sent back to the hell known as AC coupled with a lot of sweat, but it was far better than the heat. The sweat would dry. I just needed to not get sick. Too lazy to get up and walk like a normal human, I instead crawled the next few feet to first refill my canteen before drinking greedily from the pool of water before me.

Feeling a lot better, I stood up and stretched. Even the light in the pool room was a normal light. Nothing crazy, it comfortable to look at. This was infinitely better. Dear god, I was so tired now. Sitting down next to the west entrance, I started visualizing how enemies would run in, and how I'd deal with them. There was an almost infinite number of variables involved, but many of them were nullified with surprise.

If it was good enough for 'nam vets, it was good enough for me.

huh... This was a really nice spot. Didn't realize it earlier, but the temperature and lighting made this a really nice place for a nap. Power naps helpe- No! I learned my lesson from The Rock! Be aware of your surroundings whenever possible.

Which was the only reason why I heard footsteps coming from the entrance I was sitting next too. Shoot, they were really fast, heck faster then when I was running for dear life away from that snake just days ago.

At this very moment someone charged in through the west entrance. I immediately pounced as I grabbed tattoos and lunged at them, but they sprang away from me and threw a few throwing knives my way. I hastily brought up tattoos to try and block the pointy objects heading straight for my head. That was way too smooth to be a reflex. The fucker was expecting me. How? How did they know? I was quiet, and everything. Hastily, I brought up tattoos to block the knives hurtling at me.

I succeeded, though immediately afterwards I was kneed in the gut and slammed against the wall behind me. At least I wasn't sandwiched between the wall and the knee, but it still hurt like a fucking bitch. My stomach was aching (was that blood in my mouth?), but I had no time to dwell on that fact because a fist with yet another knife was following that hit.

I barely dodged the attack, and saw an opening. Her (her because of the long hair) knife was stuck deep into the wall, and I somehow still hadn't dropped my knife, even though tattoos was now no longer in my grasp. So, I pushed the knife upwards to dive into her torso when she pushed on the knife, somehow finding the strength to push the entirety of her body upwards and away from my knife so that she ended up higher up from the knife and not stabbed.

From there, she whipped out another throwing knife, and the only reason why I didn't end up with a knife sticking out from between my eyes was because she threw the knife before she looked and the weird body contortions going on other there prevented her from throwing as accurately as she had before.

So, instead of having my life ended, I instead received another stab wound near the self inflicted one. Shit! That hurt! Again, no time to think about that as I quickly disengaged from her and ran towards tattoos, before realizing that a), I just turned my back on someone with projectiles, b) she still had at least one throwable knife left (the one stuck in the wall), and c), my left arm didn't have the strength to hoist tattoos up anymore now that there was a new stab wound.

Cursing my idiocy, I dropped my knife in favour of tattoos, barely getting him up in time to block the knife thrown at me. The only good thing about this was that I now effectively had four more knives and she didn't have any left to throw at me. Seeing her attack fail, she charged towards me, and I threw tattoos at her. She skillfully dodged that, barely slowing down. However, that extra half second she used to dodge the body gave me enough time to grab my knife off the ground and stab at her when she got close enough to try and get a hit off on me.

She kept up the pace, not stopping even for a moment to regroup and think this whole thing through. If she did, then maybe she would've realized that tattoos had throwing knives in him. Oh well, that made it that much better for me. She kept on pushing, trying to either disarm me or catch me in a bad moment as I only had on arm to reliably work with. While I did use my left arm on the occasion, it couldn't really provide much force to help out and using it always made it worse.

I kept on giving ground, but since we were in a circular arena the impact was minimized. Really, all I could was slowly move backwards and dodge. thankfully, I was very good at that. However, just because I had experience with dodging and footwork didn't mean that this body had those same neural networks mapped out. I was still sloppy, and that meant that she got openings - openings that she greedily took. Couldn't blame her for that, but I was tiring out quickly.

My arms and legs were covered in bruises and were bleeding all over whenever the same spot was hit more than once. My breaths were laboured, the hits to the stomach she occaisonally sneaked in were very quickly taking their toll on me. I needed to concentrate, to think, but I couldn't take my mind off the fight without getting punished for it. And the punishment would continue if I didn't think of a way out.

For all the good things this body could do, it had not been trained yet, and just couldn't keep up this sort of fighting. If I kept on backing off, I'd be pushed to tattoos, and then she'd have her projectiles. She also knew thsis, by the grin that was starting to show on her face.

This needed to end now. A move to get me out of this crappy situation. Come on! IDEAS! COME TO ME!

Nothing came to me, and my right arm got banged up some more. I winced, before I remembered that I was kicked really bad there and owwwwww.

Finally, something inside me snapped together and I hastily assembled a plan based on that connection. Crap, I was relying on a lot of different assumptions for this to work, but it just might. It wasn't like there were any better options for me.

So, out of the blue, I dashed to the right towards the wall, pushing my legs as hard as I could (hopefully without permanent damage). As she turned around to face me, I pushed off the wall and dove straight into her, pushing her toward the pool. Even though she dodged most of the way, she dodged towards my left, towards her weapons. That was something she didn't need to win, but really wanted. I'd catched her completely by surprise as prior to then she didn't know about my speed.

Too fucking bad for her, because my left arm caught her and pushed her towards the pool. She fell towards it, and then used whatever she used to walk on water.

At that, my grin turned downright feral. This is it for you, you little dipshit.

Ignoring the pain now racking my body from all these movements, I quickly brought my right arm over along with the knife, and her eyes widened as she realized how hard she'd been played. But by then, it was too late, as I was already falling straight into the water, bringing my knife down with it right into the fuckers chest.

As I came out of the blood red waters, spluttering, I couldn't help but smile. Instincts were a powerful thing. And because of them, I earned myself another day of not dead, food for a few more days, and a heavily scratched headband with four squiggly lines on them, looking a little like waves on the ocean. Perfect.

Now I'd just go outside for a few minutes to dry off, and I'd be a happy camper 

**A/N That was a good portion of my winter break. Hope you guys liked it. I think that I have way too much fun writing fight scenes. I'm doing my best not to do any asspulls, but please, as usual feedback of any kind is very much appreciated.**

 **On a side note, Rush Garcia has some pretty good music. It's what I've been listening too while writing this.**


	4. Chapter 1-4

Before I climbed out and dried myself off, there was work that had to be done first. Dipping my arms back into the water, I pulled out the girl I'd just killed and lay her on the ground, wincing as I remembered that blood-borne diseases were a thing, which also reminded me that I'd been eating raw liver for quite a while.

Oh whatever. I could deal with AIDS after I dealt with threats of the stabbing kind.

Slowly, I took off the green vest that she wore, noting its weight and build quality. If I had to guess it had plates inside of it of some sort, to help deflect the impact of a weapon and/or absorb it. Never had one before, so I couldn't say what was going on exactly in there. It weighed a good 10 pounds wet, so I'd have to wait for it to dry before I could get a proper read on its usability.

On the vest, I found some small pockets containing some dry food, sealed in small plastic bags. It wouldn't last me a long time, but it sure did break the monotony of dry, probably edible human body parts. From various parts of her body I also found a metal headband, toeless boots, a small notebook and pencil, and a small doodle consisting of a spiral with squiggly lines on one of her sleeves.

I'd keep her around until I needed to open her up for more food. Given the number of bodies lying around, I could try eating different body parts, but I knew what worked so I didn't really want to experiment.

With all that out of the way, I finally went outside. The heat outside of the room was staggering as always, and as the adrenaline that was pumping throughout my body wore off, I slowly wilted. The heat was sapping away at my energy, so much that I felt that even my soul was slowly escaping my body. I quickly retreated back to the pool room as soon as I tired, not liking the feeling outside at all.

Picking a random spot on the ground, I lay down and tried to get in a quick nap.

Naturally, it didn't work out. I wasn't tired enough to simply collapse, and the light above me would turn off. I could cover my eyes, but that would leave me to my next problem - boredom. Not even 15 minutes into relaxation and I was already bored. My mind was fucked up.

Well, perhaps boredom wouldn't be the best way to describe. More accurately, I think I could be called… restless. A mix of anxiety and boredom. Anxious about anything that could pop up in my near future, and boredom at the lack of interesting things to do in this exceedingly bland room. Suddenly remembering the notebook I'd looted, I sat up and reached in my pouch for it. There had to be something inside it worth looking at.

Cracking it open, I could immediately tell I wouldn't be disappointed. The book, like her sleeves, had strange geometric designs on the inside of the cover. They weren't the same as the ones on her sleeves, however, which were larger and more varied in their shapes. The designs in her book were very simple, and were made with… Dark grey ink? Or blood? Strange. After a quick look into it, I immediately found that… I couldn't read a thing. All the characters were in a weird, flowy script similar to the Chinese I'd learned a little as a kid. Honestly, the only things that I could recognize were what I presumed to be dates, with a small inscription in the top right corner reading… 1094 year, 3 month 22 day?

Alright, assuming I remembered everything correctly, I was looking at a written date of… the 22nd of March, 1094. Leafing through the rest of the book, I found multiple other such dates, with the days and the month increasing the further I went through the book. Looking at the real paragraphs within the book, I could tell that I wouldn't really be able to read it. Sure, there were characters that were the same as the limited Mandarin that I recognized, but at least 70% of the book was entirely unreadable.

I could make out some characters for water, and some of the other characters might've been recognizable if it was typed up, but of course I had to have a hard time reading this woman's handwriting. Turning back towards her, I really wanted to punch her dead body for having such messy handwriting.

Naturally, I didn't punch her because it would be a really dumb thing to do, but the frustration was still there. Whatever. She's dead anyway, and I had more important things to deal with. Letting out one final huff, I stood up and whipped out my trusty knife. Tossing the notebook to the side, I firmly concentrated on my fist, how cool it would be to have a magical shield there, and _hey,_ if I could get increased strength why couldn't I get resistance to injuries while I was at it. Continuing to focus on that, I slowly brought up my knife and gave my hand a good slash.

 **(July 23, 2019) A/N Hi guys. I'm still alive. Had a bunch of things to juggle the past few months, and everything sorta settled down. So I'm back on my bullshit, and I'm writing again. A short chapter, but I'm really just trying to get back into the swing of things. I've written at least 5k words of training scenes before I realized that they were** _ **fucking boring, and no one wants to read them.**_ **So I'll only be using training scenes to introduce major semi fanon mechanics with chakra, and just speed up all the other progress. Now the challenge is doing it without it feeling rushed! (as always, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears).**

 **Anyhow, thanks for reading. Writings a fun time, and I'm glad that some people enjoy my story. Hopefully I'll see everyone around soon. No promises, but I can probably get something out within the week. ;. ;**


	5. Chapter 1-5

As I'd hoped, by hand didn't react much to the knife. Instead of a rather deep cut, I was only left with a very red swath of skin and a long bump where the knife came into contact with me. Fascinating stuff. Just by thinking hard enough, and envisioning what I wanted to happen, I managed to shield myself from a knife.

I had no illusions that this would stop a real strike from a knife, be it a stab or a slash, but it was still incredibly interesting and a lot better than sitting next to the water doing nothing.

In my past, I always found great pleasure refining my skills gradually, and nitpicking was always a process that I enjoyed, if only partially. With a completely new thing to mess around with, my curiosity was sparked, and I could make very quick improvements because of my extremely low level of skill.

I quickly sat back down and started recording my experiment on one fo the later pages in the notebook. Everything that I thought would be useful, such as my estimation on the strength of the strike, how I'd prepared myself mentally, and other important factors. As soon as I finished recording, I jumped back into testing, preparing myself and going in once again.

 **-Now where is that line break when you actually need it?-**

I quickly fell into a routine for my experiments, first thinking of something to test, testing it, and then methodically writing everything that pertained towards it. I immediately found that my hand wasn't used to writing English characters, and the little thing could only write barely legible characters, and even then it would start to cramp soon afterwards. I still couldn't use my left hand to write, I guess my preference for my right hand remained a constant.

Looking over all of my notes again, I summarized each set of them and then wrote down the major takeaways from my training session. I found that slow, regulated breathing worked the best, particularly when I exhaled when the knife made contact. However, whenever I focused on my breathing instead of what I was doing with the barrier, the knife did considerably more damage, even leaving angry red marks instead of just a bump.

I also found that pairing up my barrier with imagery really improved the effectiveness of the action. Taking the most obvious thing that came to mind when imaging a repellant, I pictured little bits of energy moving through my body to my arm, forming a row of interlocking shields. Then, just as when my knife made contact with my skin, I imagined the row of shields to push outwards, shurima shuffle style. Not only did picturing the results I wanted and pairing it with things I'd seen before allow me to slash with a lot more force then I initially thought possible, I also could prepare myself a lot quicker by speeding up my mental "construction" of the shields, and even simply retracting them in between strikes instead of rebuilding them completely.

As silly as all this felt, having some sort of visualization helped me immensely. My inexplicable skill with channelling focus didn't have any visible effects until after the fact, so I couldn't really tell how far along I was or what sort of preparations I was making. Having something that I could overlay onto what I actually saw really grounded my focus and attention, and allowed me to do what I wanted fatter and with less effort.

Maybe one day after practicing for long enough I wouldn't need to go through this process, but that day seemed to be very far off in the distance.

All in all, I was very satisfied with my findings and felt very accomplished. There wasn't much I could've done otherwise anyways, and the progress that I'd made was monumental. While I wouldn't be able to use the technique in combat just yet, having the background knowledge available opened up new opportunities, and if I continued to practice and refine it I really would be able to fight with it.

Finally closing my notebook, I lay down on the ground and took a moment to stare at the ceiling. Really, with the corridors outside of my little pool room being so hot, I felt extremely safe, and relaxed as well. The girl that'd tried to kill me earlier obviously had some sort of training as she walked on water and threw knives accurately, so I felt pretty good about my odds now. I just didn't want any more monsters like the rock. I'd appreciate that a lot.

I'd also appreciate a softer floor. I probably would've been more uncomfortable with my previous body than my current one, but my previous body didn't use a pillow, while I was still uncertain with the one I had now. The floor really dug into my shoulder blades as I lay down, but if I lay down on the ground, and focused on my breathing…

Slow, steady breathing. Deep breathing. Focus on the breath. The sand shift within you. Smirking, I decided to continue my train of thought. Feel the sand flow inside, outwards while exhaling, and going straight to the core while I inhaled. In, and out. I lay my hands on my stomach to better feel my breathing, the cold floor beneath me completely forgotten. I wasn't really thinking of anything other than my breath, and now that my breathing had slowed down, I could really appreciate the beating of my heart and the heat in my stomach. Smiling to myself, I asked myself to stop worrying about everything that was happening in my life and slowly drifted asleep.

 **-This is very crude, come on where is that feature-**

I woke up to an aching body and an arm that felt like it was on fire. I sort of expected my back to ache after sleeping on a slab of rock for an extended period of time, but my burning arm was a complete surprise. Sitting up, I took a quick look at it and found that apart from the area where I'd been practising my barrier, the limb was fine. However, the areas that saw the most barrier usage were a very bright shade of red and hot to the touch. I also couldn't move the fingers in that hand without my vision swimming and my ears tearing up.

I guess whatever I did really agitated my hand, and now the limb was out of commission, probably for an extended period of time. Unfortunate, but at least I knew not to overdo it anymore. But how much was overdoing it?

More testing was needed to answer that question. However, I could gleam that the spots that were particularly red were a network of very small lines that stood out once I really stared at my hand. They didn't really look like blood vessels, but then again I had very limited knowledge on how my own body worked.

I was just very curious as to why my hands, in particular, would experience such an adverse and painful reaction - whenever I used the boost on my legs, I never experienced such adverse effects. Sure, it was possible that there was some aching in them, but that could be chalked up to a dozen other factors

In any case, I couldn't write in my notebook because I was testing the barrier with my dominant right hand. Heck, thinking complex thoughts were difficult because every so often a spike of pain would come out of nowhere and my thoughts would all be derailed.

Even feeding myself became exponentially more difficult, as I only had one had to work with.

In any case, I could still open the notebook and think over some of my notes, and try to look for alternative uses and things to test. Setting aside a page for future tests, I began writing.

While I did experiment slightly with stabbing motions with the knife and found that the knife wouldn't pierce because of the barrier, I never really tested its ability to absorb shock. Smacking a limb with the butt end of the knife sounded like a fine way to test it.

I'd also never tested if the barrier was really hardening the skin, or forming a barrier slightly over the skin. Due to how I was picturing the barrier to work, I'd assume that it applied a layer of protection _over_ the skin, but the exact mechanics still escaped me. I'll try running the knife at a very extreme angle, and see if I encountered any resistance.

Still, all those experiments could wait. For as I was getting my brain working again I realized that _the pool room was warm._

 **A/N Eh, still a rather small chapter. Next one should be larger though... Probably going to be able to release a new chapter before the end of summer, but don't expect anything haha. Just know that I'm actively working on this again, so even if the updates are slow they will still come! And with those updates, some more action! You can have to all bloodthirsty weebs!**

 **As usual, hope everyone enjoyed this chapter. I'd like some feedback on how I handled some of this training stuff because even after a week it still looks wonky to me.**

 **Thanks for sticking with me!**


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